Ice bath
by hyperempathie
Summary: "She holds him there, this strange magnetism between them keeps them both steady. That's how it's always been. When one of them falls apart, the pieces always cling to the other. It works."


They're sitting in Victoria's room, cross legged on her bed so their knees are touching, phone between them, sharing earbuds. The sweltering heat of July spills into the room through the window, the hot glass seems to radiate warmth and the light leaves everything with a yellow film over it. Her cacti on the window sill must be enjoying it, she thinks, but she's sweating in shorts and one of Nathan's old T-shirts. This is what summer was made for, rehabilitating in her room, recovering from all the pressures of the school year, all the grief that wracks both of them, winding down. So they don't have to talk.

Nathan is in his boxers and a white T-shirt, she looks at the hair on his legs and how it turns soft above his knees, and she can't help the urge to put a hand on his thigh. It's soft, warm, her hand is probably sweaty but Nathan doesn't seem to mind. She thinks of her own legs, wonders what it would be like to be fuzzy like that. He just looks up at her, tired blue eyes staring into hers like she's something important. Unconsciously, she shuffles closer.

Her thumb rubs his thigh gently, feeling all the raised bumps, mostly old scars that have faded to white, but some newer, angry looking ones too. She looks at Nathan. There's always something in his eyes, something afraid or angry.

"I get scared of being sad, so I get angry instead," he told her once. Angry is scary and distant, you can't touch angry without getting burned. But with Vic that outer shell softens, she can pry him open petal by petal.

The hand that's on his leg moves up to brush his cheek, and he leans into it. It makes her think of cats. It's scratchy where she brushes against his stubble. She holds him there, this strange magnetism between them keeps them both steady. That's how it's always been. When one of them falls apart, the pieces always cling to the other. It works.

He looks Michelangelesque, looks marble carved, cold, but with blood pulsing beneath that pallid shell. When she goes to move her hand away, he grabs her wrist and presses a kiss to it, then to her knuckles, and then her fingertips. She can't help but press against his lips gently, watching the way that plush dips under the pressure, before moving her hand to rub the back of his neck. Absentmindedly, she takes her ear bud out, and Nathan follows.

Neither of them notice that they're coming closer, in each other's space to the point where she might as well be sitting in his lap. Eventually, Nathan leans over, wraps an arm around her middle and brings their faces closer to each other. He kisses her slow and languid, softer than rain, and Victoria wonders if she could somehow exude all her feelings towards him, make them manifest in his chest so he understands. Instead, she wraps her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist so they fit together like orange pieces.

Her fingers run through his greasy, unwashed hair; his hands dance along her back, he can't pick a favorite place to touch her.

In the last few months, he's been wound so tight, a coil bending in on itself until it almost disappears completely, spine fractured and bent like pretzels. And he knows she can see it. Knows it worries her sick and despondent that there's no way she can fix it. So it's a welcome reprieve to both of them, he thinks, that they can spend these few summer weeks together, and maybe he can get himself together before he tears her apart. Even just kissing her like this, he has to repress that guilt that burns within him, because someone tore something inside him when he was small and it's never healed, someone twisted him in a way that he doesn't want her to see.

But when they part, her eyes blink open. She's always looking at him, and he's ashamed of how much he likes it. It's selfish how comforting her touch is, how he doesn't recoil to protect her from what's inside him. And she's still looking, like she's reading every thought running through his head, catching up to the fact that he's in his head again.

"Nate," she says, "Nathan."

His eyes focus on her face, her mouth, the juncture between her neck and her jaw, her eyes.

"Vic," it's a whisper, voice buried breathing somewhere deep within his chest. Her hand is on his shoulder again, like a stone pulling him down but they can both breathe underwater. That's where he wants to be with her. In the depths of the ocean where there's no sunlight, just them, forever enveloped, where the salt water on his cheeks doesn't make her hand dart up and wipe his face.

He doesn't even notice, there are no sobs that wrack him, just one drop and then another and another. She rubs her palms where they run along his cheeks, still looking at him, tearing through all those paper walls of tough and angry and reaching parts of him he's too scared to look at. That's when it catches up to him, that's when he breathes out, labored, hiccups and sobs dryly. Like a fish out of water.

The summer sun feels like it scorches him, the heat feels suffocating and the air feels thick and painful. He doesn't want to fix this if he has to unravel it first.

She holds him for a while like that, he sobs into her shoulder and she strokes his hair and kisses his ears and cheeks, rubs his back and tells him it's okay.

"Do you wanna take a bath?" she whispers in his ear. There's no one there to overhear them, but it feels safer that way. He nods.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay," and his throat is sore from trying to keep his voice down while he cried. It makes him feel like a child each time he sobs like that, gathers all his weak energy and expels it outwards.

Victoria is the first to get up. She takes the baggy shirt off. There's nothing underneath it, and he sees how she curves inwards when his gaze drags across her torso. It's nothing but admiration. He stands up too, takes his own shirt off, then clumsily hooks a thumb in the waistband of her panties. It makes her smile something bashful, but playful at the same time. She's just like him.

They barely fit in the tub, facing each other and with Victoria's legs around Nathan's waist again. The water is cool, the light makes it reflect on the shiny blue tiles. It gently splashes when they move, and Nathan can feel every muscle in his back slowly go lax. They watch their arms and legs under the water, how it distorts them and makes them feel separate from the rest of their bodies.

Nathan reaches his wet hands up and runs them through Victoria's hair, moving it out of her face and pushing it back instead. Then, he gathers some more water in his hands and pours it onto her hair. They look after each other.

When they were younger they used to play in Vic's pool every summer, sometimes with friends in the middle of the day, sometimes just the two of them after it got dark outside. One of those nights, Nathan caught fireflies in a jar and gave it to her, and they both watched them for a while before she opened the lid and let them out.

"We're gonna get out of here," she says, voice echoing against the tiles and breaking his train of thought. She looks so real in front of him, and he reaches a wet hand out to brush her cheek. It's soft and warm. He wishes he could fish out simple and clean from the water they're in and give it to her, he wishes they could both duck their heads down and drown in it. Instead, they just sit there.

"Vic," is all the can think to say, as if she's going to rescue him, as if calling to her will get them out.

"I love you."

"I," it's always hard for him to say it, like something in his heart doesn't want to give up control, wants to recoil and run. He says it sometimes, like when they're fucking or when he's holding her and she can't see his face, but he thinks it all the time. He's jealous of how easily it slips from her lips.

"I know," she says, painfully understanding. He thinks maybe she wastes all that kindness within herself on him instead of giving to people who deserve it. He doesn't tell her this, "I know, Nate."

The water isn't cold on his skin anymore, and their fingertips are wrinkled from being submerged. He puts his arm across the edge of the tub, and then she puts her arm on top of his, the tips of her fingers touching his shoulder. She's the only person he knows how to be quiet and true with.

They sit like that for a while, no sound, just the water splashing softly, touching each other in innocent ways. When they get out, he watches drops fall from her skin and thinks of Venus rising from the ocean. He comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her, and she leans back against him.

When they go back to her room, it's already dark outside, so Victoria turns on her desk lamp. She gives him one of his T-shirts and a pair of boxers, then puts on a long shirt and starts to towel dry her hair. If he were less considerate, he'd take her picture right then, but he knows her mind, knows she's so hyper aware of herself and how she looks that any moment where she doesn't feel observed is a welcome reprieve. So he memorizes her like that, the stretch marks on her hips and thighs forming like roots or lightning, her nipples poking through her shirt, her wet hair dripping onto her shoulders and her bare face looking back at him.

"Don't stare," she tries to sound serious, but can't help the small smile from forming as she approaches, wraps her arms around his neck and looks up at him.

"You're beautiful."

She rolls her eyes at this, though she knows he's being serious. Standing up on the tips of her toes, she leans close to him, tilts her head to the side and captures his lips in a soft kiss. The way their shadow spills on the wall merges their shape into one. In front of her, compared to her, he feels like he's all knobby knees and bad posture, a sort of lanky child with nothing to offer. Still, her hand is on the back of his neck, bringing him down to Earth. When they part, she looks up at him, and he blinks slow, but his eyes focus on the clock behind her.

10PM

A shiver runs through him at the thought of going home, he can't stand that house or the people in it, and he especially can't stand what it turns him into: Some weird half-person, half-dog, all angry and buried deep inside himself. His girl notices that he's not looking at her, so she turns around to see what's got him so shaken up.

"Oh, Nate," her hand rubs the back of his neck to try to ease the tense muscles.

"Can I-," his brows furrow, embarrassed at how he stumbles when he tries to speak, "can I stay the night?"

"Yeah, of course."

He nods, more grateful than he shows and reaches for his phone to text his mom before he gets too deep in his own head and forgets. He sits down at the edge of Vic's bed, jabs his fingers clumsily at the screen, thanks the autocorrect function with all his heart and presses send. The open window lets bugs in the room, two moths fly around the lamp on Victoria's desk. She sits down next to him.

The first time they ever sat like this, it was her 14th birthday. When everyone else was going home, she'd grabbed his arm and whispered to him, in her adolescent tipsiness and excitement, to come upstairs with her. They sat on her bed just like they're sitting now, then turned to face each other.

She tilted her head to one side, and he could only stare at her lip gloss and wonder how it would taste. They'd kissed on the cheek before, but this was different. Victoria had set out to make this the best first kiss ever, she drank enough chardonnay to make herself brave and even stole a cigarette from Nathan that she couldn't finish. So when she pressed their lips together, she leaned forward onto an equally intoxicated and clumsy Nathan, and they both toppled back.

"Nate," Victoria says, putting a hand on his thigh, and he turns to look at her "what are you thinking about?"

"Your 14th birthday."

She raises her eyebrows, he sees the moment that same memory pops into her head, and gives a sudden 'ha' before erupting in a giggle, cheeks going pink. He chuckles along with her and nudges her knee with his.

"Wow, can't believe us and this bed go that far back," she says, still smiling wide and playful.

"Yeah, your bed has seen some shit," and he moves so he's cross legged, facing Victoria, just like earlier.

"Well, at least we had a bit of a glow up since then," as she's saying this, she moves so that she's kneeling and wraps her arms around Nathan's neck, looking down at him, "and I'm sure my romantic prowess has improved at least slightly."

Instead, Nathan lets himself fall back onto the bed, pulling Vic down with him. She spills right over him, hands planted on the pillow on either side of his head and her hair hanging above his face.

"This is familiar," he tells her, putting his arms around her waist and pulling her down a little until she's resting on just her elbows. It's good. Any closeness between them is good, they prefer it to the alternative. Like a safety net or a source of comfort. She dips down some more and kisses right on his jawline while his hands run up her shirt and dance across the skin of her back.

They stay like that for a while, kissing and touching and being greedy with each other. Nathan thinks maybe if he lets her go she'll float away, hit the ceiling and stay there; and if she finds a window, she'll float all the way up into the sky. They move at one point, lying down next to each other, and she wraps her legs around his, stroking his cheek gently and looking at him. No matter how kind and adoring she looks, something inside him boils with shame, makes him feel ugly and useless. He almost doesn't notice her leaning up to kiss him, but he responds instinctively, kissing her right back and nibbling at her bottom lip.

At one point, he starts spending longer inside his own head, and at one point Vic gets up and turns the lights off. She gets right back in bed next to him and he puts an arm over her. She feels lax, looking up at him in the dark and planting lazy little kisses on his face and neck. He does the same to her, pushes her hair off her face and rubs at the side of her neck gently. It's easy for him to fall asleep like that, to get lost in a thick fog of affection and carelessness and finally snuff out any terrible thought inside him for the night.


End file.
